My Little World
by Mia-Zeklos
Summary: Narcissa has a small secret of her own she hadn't trust anybody with yet.3/3 stories written for smilelaughread's Inspiration Challenge on the Harry Potter Challenges Forum.


_The third story written for smilelaughread's Inspiration Challenge on the Harry Potter Challenges Forum. The challenge was "Use the prompt in three or more stores, each one a different genre. No restrictions after that." My prompt was close(r)(ed)._

**Author's notes: Another headcanon thing about Narcissa and Rabastan being friends at all – and also for the Black Manor being in the same village as the house of the Weasleys. This was something I wrote a while ago, but I wasn't sure it's worth posting and now I… well, I have an excuse to post it.**

**While I'm still here, sorry to everyone that got me on their alert for this daily portion of rather pointless fics, but… I'm already too addicted to these challenges to stop now.**

**Anyway, do ignore the title, please – I never know how to name my stories.**

"Why me?" Rab still wondered as Cissy almost dragged him through Ottery St. Catchpole to the only bookstore in the village. "Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be the only one you've brought here. I just still don't get it. You've never came here with any of your friends…"

"But you're my _best_ friend, Rab!" Cissy beamed at him and her grip around his hand tightened as she smiled again. Rab smiled back subconsciously. Her good mood was influencing even on him, and he had a quite bad day before he met her here. "And also, I'm not really sure that there's anybody else who'd understand."

"No one?" the boy raised his eyebrows. "Not even Lucius?"

"Especially Lucius."

Rab fell silent, but now he was even more confused than before. Narcissa was – most of the time – convinced that Lucius is able to understand everything about her (or most likely, everything about everything). What so unordinary she was about to show him now – so unordinary that she thought that even dear Lucius wouldn't get it?

"Does he know about it… whatever it is?" Rab asked curiously as he watched Cissy's golden hair gleam in the summer sunlight because she was walking in front of him. She looked back at him questioningly.

"Lucius? Yes, he does, but he thinks it's stupid. Anyway, here we are."

They had stopped in front of the bookstore now, and Cissy entered it confidently. Unlike her, Rab hesitated – it was a Muggle bookstore after all – but then followed her and heard a soft sound coming of a small bell which rang when he closed the door behind himself.

The bookstore was large; probably there were hundreds of books on the shelves – most of them were almost certainly Muggle ones for he hadn't heard their titles nor he had seen them before. There were, however, a few shelves in the far end of the place, which he somehow felt that was meant only for wizards and witches – maybe the Muggles around weren't even able to see them? He could see not one or two books with fairytales his mother Olivia had read to him when he was a child and ones Rab – who had recently turned sixteen – had read sooner.

The boy could feel the magic in the air – there was a cool wind in the bookstore; one that hardly resembled the heat outside, and there was no Muggle machine for it – or at least not one that Rab could see. But then again, he had never seen any sort of Muggle devices, or he had seen them quite rarely, so he would probably not be able to recognize one when seeing it.

He actually kind of liked the bookstore – he was ashamed to admit it even to himself, for it was a Muggle bookstore after all – but it had this specific air of happiness Rabastan could always recognize. It was one of those places that make you feel nice and comforted and you are not even sure why. He could see that all the people around were sensing it too – the men and women sitting near the small wooden tables or standing near the shelves were smiling too, for no particular reason, the boy could hear laugh coming from somewhere near him.

"Cissy." he managed after a long pause in which the girl was entertaining herself by choosing random books from the shelves around and reading out loud quotes to him. "It's a nice shop, I have to say, but why are we here anyway?"

Silence. Rab turned around, but Narcissa had disappeared in the second he had taken his eyes off her. He panicked and started looking around, but couldn't find her. Suddenly the doors seemed too close to him, as if they were going to capture him in a cage. He wasn't used to hang around in the Muggle world, especially all alone. Especially in a small village where almost no wizard could be found. In the second he prepared to start shouting and yelling, however, he spotted his friend near the door.

She was standing there, laughing and talking to a man Rabastan vaguely remembered he had seen before - maybe. Or at least, he had seen someone that looked somewhat like him. The man was tall - very tall, pale and blonde, pretty much resembling the features of...

...his daughter. The man was - most likely - Cygnus Black. So the bookstore was his. Rab approached them, hesitating, and Cissy smiled at him encouragingly when her father wasn't looking. "Dad, I'd like to introduce to you Rabastan Lestrange." she said, raking the boy's arm and dragging him closer to Cygnus.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sir." Rab said as politely as he could and shook the man's hand. Cygnus eyed him quite suspiciously, but then smiled to him too. It wasn't the same warm smile he gave to his daughter, but it was a beginning. "It's nice to meet you too, Rabastan." he answered and Rab immediately felt better. Cygnus seemed much nicer than Druella - Narcissa's mother. When he met her for the first time, the woman had stared at him as if Rab was something nasty on her carpet.

Cygnus sighed tiredly when another person - a Muggle woman this time - in the bookstore came to ask for his assistance.

"All right, Cissy, Rabastan," the man said and followed the woman that had called for him (if Rab's opinion was right – and he had judged by the dreamy look in said woman's eyes – poor Cygnus that suspected nothing was more of a love interest for her than a bookseller). "Have fun, I'll have to leave you now… and don't break anything." He smiled distractedly at them and disappeared among the shelves.

"Does your father just work here or…"

"No, the bookstore's his." Cissy replied before Rab had the chance to finish his sentence. "But only taking you here wasn't exactly what I wanted to do." The girl said and took his hand again. "There's something more I want to show to you… Come…"

He complied and let her take him on another trip in the bookstore as they were passing between the people and the bookshelves all around them. As he was following her half-absently, Rabastan suddenly realised why she thought that he would be the only one to understand.

Cygnus had a bookstore. Not on Diagon Alley or Nocturne Alley, but in the village near the Black Manor – a village full of Muggles; a village where he could rarely speak to any people of his class at all. Oh, there were wizards in Ottery St. Catchpole, of course – Rabastan had heard from Cissy that the Weasleys lived somewhere around, because her cousin Molly Prewett – Lucretia Black was her mother – was going out with that guy – Arthur Weasley or something like that.

But Cygnus's clients were, however, either Muggles or the Weasleys – in other words, the most awful blood traitors Rab could imagine, which was almost as bad as Muggles. And yet, Cygnus preferred that instead of staying home with his wife – who, as much as the boy knew, he hated wholeheartedly.

It was quite strange that Cygnus was the Black in the family, Rabastan thought. He was blonde and his eyes were crystal blue – Cissy had inherited most of his looks. The only Black looks were the noble features of his face and the way he talked and walked – like he was indeed almost a royal.

Cissy's sisters – Bella and Andi, as their youngest sister often called them – were almost perfect replicas of Druella, their mother, who was a Rosier, but they looked pretty much as the other only Blacks Rab knew – Sirius and Regulus, Cissy's cousins. If he didn't know better, he would think that Cygnus had been adopted, so unlike the other ones he was.

But Rabastan could understand her father's intentions to work here – Cygnus had enough money not to work if he didn't want to, but if he stayed home, he would need to stay with his wife all the time.

"Look at that!" Narcissa interrupted his thoughts and Rabastan looked at what she was proudly pointing at. "Welcome to my small universe."

There was another thing that the boy was almost certain that could be seen only by wizards and witches – Muggles seemed to avoid it despite the fact that it couldn't pass unnoticed, for it was probably something that couldn't be seen anywhere very often.

Rab wasn't sure if there was a name for said thing at all. It looked like a bed, for it had a few small pillows on it, but it was more of a bench, really. It seemed comfortable; that was for sure. It didn't look like something he could lay on, but maybe he could sit there reclining on it. There were two more shelves on the two sides of the… thing, but Rabastan could see that they weren't ones for selling – they didn't even look new to begin with. And he also spotted some of Cissy's favorite books on them and suddenly, he realised what exactly she was showing to him.

"That's amazing…" Rab said quietly, not sure what reaction exactly his friend was expecting from him. "But… are you sure that you want me around here, Cissy?" he asked unsurely. Narcissa smiled at him with a quite surprised look in her eyes.

"Of course, Rab!" she exclaimed as if the answer was obvious anyway. "Come. Sit here with me for a while."

He did, even though it felt quite strange to do it. It was like entering somebody else's world – this was some personal space he wasn't sure he was supposed to be in. And yet, the girl next to him didn't look at him as if his presence was unwelcome – and if it was, why she would take him here at all, he thought.

So that was where Narcissa disappeared when she told people that 'she was going to take a book and relax'. Always when she said that, Rabastan had imagined her taking a book and going either in her room or somewhere in the gardens of the Black Manor – or even on the fields in Ottery St. Catchpole. He had never even guessed that she would go in the village, in her father's bookstore and read her favorite books in her little acre of heaven right there.

He felt quite jealous – in a good way – of her. She could have this little world of hers and he couldn't even imagine having something like that for him.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Cissy." Rab said, just as quietly, trying not to become by any means an obstacle between her and this place which was apparently so special for her.

"You're always welcome, Rab." she said and hugged him distractedly. "I told you, you're maybe the only one who'd understand this strange idea of mine."

Rab could see that showing all this to him wasn't such a big deal for Cissy and yet, it was a memory he kept in his mind for years after this moment.

To him, it was almost having a world of his own too.


End file.
